Dan Yack

Poet, journalist and novelist Cendrars (1887-1961) translated his own restless travels into fictional metaphors of modern instability. Central to this vertiginous novel, with its sizzling verbal fireworks, is an epic voyage to the South Pole. Self-indulgent Dan Yack, madcap heir to a Liverpool shipping fortune, learns that his beloved Hedwiga is marrying a Russian prince. Consoling himself drunkenly in decadent, fin-de-siecle St. Petersburg, he decides to plunge into adventures ranging from zany to macabre. He invites three penniless artiststhe poet Goischman, the sculptor Sabakov and Lamont the composeron a random schooner voyage. Together they winter in the strange and terrifying fastnesses of Antarctica, where icebergs duplicate the architecture of European cities. Infatuated with the Antarctic's ""inhuman allure,'' Dan Yack barely reacts to the gruesome disasters that befall his companions following an interminable and hallucinating polar night. Hurling himself with machine-like energy into fresh absurdist enterprises, Dan Yack confronts a final bizarre solitude. As a kaleidoscopic document of literary ``cubism'' written in 1929, this novel anticipates the surreal atmosphere of today's avant-garde fiction. (November)